Chino Hills City Council moving forward with its open space program

CHINO HILLS >> The City Council will not be holding any more workshops to discuss the future open space program, despite dozens of questions from residents left unanswered.

After hosting a number of community workshops over the year to discuss encroachment on city-owned land, council members recently directed city staff to move forward with placing the program on its agenda, with the intention of fine-tuning it to eventually become policy.

City officials have notified 238 property owners that they are encroaching on city open space.

At a workshop late last month, officials said 22 property owners have removed the encroachment, and 29 - upon further review by staff - were removed from the list because the encroachment “wasn’t significant enough” to pursue, said Mayor Peter Rogers.

The city is now left with 187 outstanding encroachments.

“Our goal has continued to make sure everybody on this list is given an opportunity to understand the process that we’re going through and eventually bring it as a policy to the public,” Rogers said.

While city officials are willing to look at each encroachment case individually, what they’re not saying is whether the land-grab poses a health or safety concern.

Some of the items that the City Council has directed staff to investigate are its ability to sell property at a price below fair market value, the ability to sell park land to property owners with encroachments and a potential to create an e-notify through the city’s website to inform those who registered for notifications of any upcoming meetings or updates to the program.

Staff will also be asked to provide a weekly tracking list of the identified encroachments with status updates, bring any future information regarding the program back to the council at its regular meetings and undertake inspections of all potential encroachment properties where they appear on the list of identified encroachments in clusters of two or more adjacent houses on any given street.

But even Rogers admits the recent workshop on Oct. 24 included first-time workshop-goers and angry residents, like Elias Ochoa Jr. who is on a fixed income.

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Ochoa, bought his home on Shantung Avenue in 1976 for $35,000 using money he received from the GI Bill. Plus, he said he paid extra for preferred property for the area the city is now saying he is encroaching on.

“The county fenced the property and I continued the fencing to keep the dogs, coyotes and cattle away,” said the 66-year-old. “...It’s unfair for me to pay any more.”

Another resident John Bowers, who lives on Homeridge Lane, questioned the system that determined the property line and argued why he’s being accused of “unlawful property lines.”

Bowers said when he purchased the home nine years ago there wasn’t a disclosure of encroachment, moreover, the so-called land that he’s encroached on is unusable.

“I’m not interested in purchasing it because it can’t be used for anything,” he said. “The community use said it was used for views and recreational uses - I don’t see either one of those things happening with that property that we have been maintaining for nine years.”

Councilman Ed Grahm said residents with concerns should continue to contact city staff and speak at the City Council meetings.

City Manager Mike Fleager said there is clear direction on what the council needs direction on and that will come back to a future meeting and can be placed on an agenda.

Rogers said when staff does all its homework and when the item is brought back to the council it is then that they’ll be able to explore the whole program and come to an official decision on the policy.

“That then puts a line in the sand which will allow staff to do further research on property by property,” he said.